Death's Bright Day: Chapter Nine

DaSaenz Estate, Jardin

    Where the hell am I? Daniel thought. He was seeing the interior of Starscape Caverns, but the glowworms were racing about like startled cockroaches. What Hell am I in?

    Daniel opened his eyes. His head hurt, his left arm was an icy lump attached to his shoulder, and his vision was as blurry as if he were under water. He lay on a blue couch, his toes sticking over the open end and his head lifted on the low arm at the other.

    His feet were bare and he was naked beneath an amazingly soft sheet.

    “He’s coming around,” said Adele, seated near his head on a chair whose upholstery matched that of the couch.

    Daniel turned toward her. There was a white flash inside his skull. It was a moment before he could see anything again.

    “Not very far around,” he croaked, closing his eyes and opening them again carefully after a moment. “The last time I felt this way, I’d been drinking Power Room alcohol that we’d cut with spoiled grape juice.”

    Hogg and Miranda were across the room, placing someone in a side-loading Medicomp. Daniel couldn’t see who it was. As blurry as his vision was, he couldn’t have sworn to Miranda and Hogg.

    “An hour ago you were telling anybody who would listen that you were all right,” Adele said. “None of us did listen, of course.”

    “That’s good,” said Daniel, “because I was lying.”

    He relaxed again with his eyes closed. His voice was getting stronger with use, and the dizziness seemed to be going away. “What’s the damage, then?”

    “Your left ulna, that’s in the forearm, was cracked,” Adele said. “Your skull wasn’t broken thanks to your having gotten your arm up so promptly, but you have contra-cu injuries to your brain. The Medicomp reversed the swelling before it did permanent damage, but the drugs will be affecting you for at least the next twelve hours. And you’ve got a splint on your left arm, of course.”

    Hogg and Miranda walked to where Daniel lay. Tovera and a woman Daniel didn’t know moved in front of the Medicomp. They must have been standing farther into the room than Daniel could see without sitting up or craning his neck over the arm of the couch. The way he felt now, Daniel wasn’t that interested in much of anything.

    “That’s daSaenz?” Daniel said quietly, hooking his thumb in the direction of the Medicomp.

    “That’s Timothy daSaenz,” Adele said. She nodded to the unfamiliar woman who was now joining them. “And this is our hostess, Mistress Carlotta daSaenz.”

    Carlotta daSaenz must have had lush good looks when she was in her twenties, but she was nearly fifty now and was fighting a losing battle with her weight. Daniel winced, thinking of his own waistline. She clasped her hands together before her and said, “Captain Leary, on behalf of my family and myself. What my son attempted to do was…”

    She shook her head slowly as though she was looking for a word in the pattern of the carpet.

    “Insane,” she said. “Unbelievable. Unforgiveable.”

    Carlotta raised her eyes and went on, “I am the head of the family so this was my responsibility, but I knew nothing of what Timothy intended. I swear to you as a mother!”

    “What did your son intend?” Daniel asked. He felt and sounded calm, though raspy. The drugs probably had something to do with that, though in fact he was usually clinical about events in the past. He was alive and Miranda was uninjured; that was good enough.

    “I met Timothy Dorst when I was a young woman,” Carlotta said. “I was giving a party for my friends and I thought that an RCN supply ship might have something exotic that would give me a coup.”

    She had raised her head, but she was looking in the direction of a painting on the wall above Daniel’s couch. From his angle it seemed to be of flowers, but he doubted his hostess had any real interest in it.

    “I spoke with a young midshipman who agreed to provide forty servings of pepperfish,” Carlotta said. “If I would invite him to the party also. And I did.”

    “Pepperfish is very tasty,” Daniel said. That was true, at least fresh-caught off the coast of Bantry. A replenishment ship probably carried it frozen in bulk, so forty missing servings weren’t going to set off any alarms.

    He had spoken to urge Carlotta along. She’d stopped to stare at her hands as she wrung them together.

    “He was so handsome…” Carlotta whispered. “And so different from anyone I knew. Even my friends who’d been off Jardin had only seen people like themselves and places like here. Timothy was…”

    Tears dribbled down her cheeks. Hogg startled Daniel by whipping a doily one-handed from under the flower arrangement on the table nearby and putting it into Carlotta’s hands. The vase rattled but didn’t fall over.

    Carlotta blew her nose and nodded gratefully toward Hogg. She didn’t resume speaking.

    “Midshipman Dorst was the father of your son?” Daniel asked gently.

    “No, no,” said Carlotta. “Timothy was Jacques’ son, my husband after I married. But Timothy, Midshipman Dorst, was the only man I ever loved or could love. I kept thinking he would come back some day. I dreamed that he would. But of course he had his career. And had his wife.”

    She turned to Miranda and dipped her head in formal acknowledgement. “And that was proper,” Carlotta said, “because he was a man. I would not have loved Timothy if he were not a man.”

    Miranda nodded back, still-faced. She said, “Did you hate my father?”

    “I love him, dear,” Carlotta said. She seemed to have forgotten that the two of them weren’t alone in the room. “I loved him then and I love him now. My Timothy did not come back, but he sent his daughter who has his eyes and his smile. You make my heart well again, dear Miranda.”

    “Why did your son try to kill Captain Leary?” Adele said. She didn’t normally interject when a subject was speaking freely, but perhaps she wanted to guide the discussion.

    “That was why,” Carlotta said with a sad smile. “I took my family name back after the divorce. I told Timothy that I would always love him as my son, but that I had never loved his father. The daughter of the man I still love was coming to visit me, and if I felt after meeting her as I did now, I would make her co-heir with him.”

    “So your son stood to lose a lot of money,” Daniel said. He was still woozy and he wasn’t sure that he’d fully taken in all he was being told, but the motive seemed clear.

    “The daSaenz wealth is beyond computation!” Carlotta said. “Timothy doesn’t have expensive tastes any more than I do. All he really cares about are the caves…but he cared more about the caves than I understood.”

    She closed her eyes for a moment, then resumed, “He kept saying, screaming really, ‘You can’t give the caves up to an outsider, even part ownership!’ And I said that I was head of the family, and that I would follow my heart.”

    “But didn’t you…” Daniel said, but he was losing the thought in the fog of his mind. “You sent him to greet us, I mean?”

    “I did not,” Carlotta said forcefully. “I knew Mistress Miranda was coming, but I didn’t know when. ‘In about another week’ I was told by our agents at the port, that was how long it would take a yacht from Cinnabar to arrive even if you lifted at the time you planned to.”

    “We radioed down when the Princess Cecile reached Jardin orbit,” Adele said. Though polite, her voice was that of a displeased Lady Mundy.

    “Timothy had directed that all messages regarding Captain Leary’s arrival be given to him alone,” Carlotta said stiffly. “He had given those orders to both the port agent and to my steward. He said it was a family matter and that I had told him to deal with it.”

 

---

 

    She paused and swallowed before saying, “The servants will be punished in whatever fashion you direct, Captain Leary.”

    “Oh, no!” said Miranda.

    Daniel thought about what his father would do if faced with a similar situation. Corder Leary wasn’t cruel, but he had been known to punish a mistake brutally to make others more careful in similar circumstances.

    “Brutally” didn’t mean the same thing on civilized Cinnabar that it might here on Jardin, of course.

    “I don’t think any punishment is called for here,” Daniel said. “It appears that your servants made the same mistake you did, after all. As I did, for that matter: trusting the son of the house.”

    “I am so sorry,” Carlotta said. “So very sorry.”

    “I gather that Timothy daSaenz attempted to lose Captain Leary and his wife in the depths of the cave,” Adele said. “Where they wouldn’t be found even when we learned what he had done. He didn’t realize that Captain Leary had a pair of RCN goggles which not only allowed him to see in the dark –”

    She raised the goggles in her right hand. She must have found them in the cargo pocket of his trousers.

    Where I’d forgotten them.

    “– but also have an inertial compass which allowed him to retrace his steps precisely.”

    “Oh!” said Miranda. “I didn’t realize…”

    Her voice trailed off. She looked down at Daniel in dawning surprise.

    “No, that’s wrong,” Daniel croaked. “I’d forgotten they were there. I just went back to childhood when Hogg was teaching me always to know where I was in the woods and how I’d gotten there.”

    Adele’s face went blank, but Miranda’s expression was softening again.

    “I went right back to basics,” Daniel said. “I learned about goggles in the Academy, but the shock of being dumped in that hole — I just grabbed the first way out.”

    “And we did get out,” said Miranda. “We came straight back to the entrance. I was never in doubt.”

    She bent and kissed Daniel on the forehead. He stiffened, but her lips were as soft as a warm breeze.

    “Oh, did I hurt you?” Miranda said in concern.

    “No, no,” said Daniel. “Not you. I flinched for what it might be, is all.”

    “I’m so sorry.” Carlotta repeated into the handkerchief.

    “How is, ah, Timothy doing?” Daniel said. He was curious, but he was also trying to change the subject.

    “He’ll live,” Tovera said as she walked to them from the Medicomp. She had put her sub-machine gun back into its nest in the attaché case. “He may even be able to feed himself one of these days. He’s not going to walk, though, and I’ll give long odds that he won’t be able to speak complete sentences.”

    Carlotta made no sound except a gasp. She looked as though lightning had struck her.

    “We can’t be sure of that so soon!” said Miranda. “It’s far too early to give a prognosis.”

    Tovera shrugged and smiled. Fortunately Carlotta wasn’t looking at the smile. “Maybe so,” Adele’s servant said. “I’ve read a lot of Medicomp displays over the years, though. You’ve got quite a wrist on you, mistress.”

    Carlotta sobbed. She ran to the Medicomp and hugged the cabinet. Miranda joined her, putting her arms around the shoulders of the older woman.

    Daniel grimaced. Why did Tovera have to say that? But that wasn’t a question you could usefully ask a sociopath.

    And — Daniel grinned, mildly embarrassed at doing so — the truth was, he was just as glad that Timothy was in a bad state. Though he was sorry that Miranda apparently felt it was on her conscience.

    Tovera grinned back at Daniel. That sobered him immediately.

    Adele said, “I’ve checked the house security system. Carlotta wasn’t informed that the Princess Cecile had landed. Today Timothy told her that he was going to a club in Cuvier and that he might not return to the manor until tomorrow. He has stayed in town overnight in the past.”

    Daniel almost shook his head but thought better of it. He’d been feeling better ever since he woke up, but that was a low standard. It would be some time before he could do normal things without remembering what had just happened.

    “Do you think it was really about the caves?” Daniel said. “That seems a strange thing to care so much about.”

    He pitched his voice low as Adele had hers, though Carlotta and Miranda seemed engrossed in conversation. Neither was now crying.

    Adele shrugged. “I don’t have enough information to be sure,” she said. “Nothing we know suggests that Carlotta is wrong, however. And it was the caves that Miranda’s father spoke of.”

    “Sure, but he really meant — ” Daniel said.

    He stopped himself. He didn’t know what Captain Dorst had really been thinking of. Certainly he might have been mourning the beautiful heiress or even his own lost youth when he spoke of Starscape Caves. But it was at least possible that the caves and their glowworms had hit him as hard as they later did Timothy daSaenz.

    “The glowworms are interesting,” Daniel said at last. “They’re unique in my experience, but then a lot of life forms are unique. That’s part of the marvel of being a spacer. But glowworms weren’t anything special to me.”

    Miranda and Carlotta rejoined them. Each had an arm around the other’s waist.

    “Daniel,” Miranda said. “Our plan was that I should return to Cinnabar when you left for your other business. That’s correct?”

    “Yes,” said Daniel, wondering where this was going. If Miranda insisted on staying aboard the Princess Cecile after this experience, well, he couldn’t blame her. “There’s plenty of traffic so we ought to be able to find suitable passage for you. But if you don’t –”

    “I want to stay here,” Miranda said firmly. “Carlotta and I have talked it over. There’s nothing I need to do on Cinnabar and, well, I’d like to see more of Jardin. And the caves.”

    Daniel opened his mouth, then shut it. After a moment he said, “I think that’s a good idea. And of course you can easily return to Cinnabar if you recall there’s something you need to do after all.”

    Hogg looked at Carlotta and said, “You think that’s safe, young master?”

    “I think you’re forgetting who saved whom in the cave, Hogg,” said Miranda sharply. “But yes, it’s quite safe.”

    Carlotta had drawn herself straighter at Hogg’s question. She smiled sadly and said, “It is right that the question be asked, Master Hogg. But yes, it is safe. Miranda is now the only child I have.”

    Adele coughed. “I think I should go back to the ship and inform the officers of the situation in person,” she said. “Will you and Miranda be returning with me?”

    “No, I’ll stay the night — ” he looked up at Carlotta ” — if?”

    “Of course,” she said.

    “Tomorrow we’ll see how I feel,” Daniel said. “I’ll be back for a time, anyway. What do we have for transportation?”

    “There are aircars up to ten-place and ground vehicles,” Carlotta said. “Also drivers. Anything you wish is yours.”

    “Can we have the one I drove up from the cave in?” Tovera said unexpectedly. “I engaged the automatic stabilizer and it was very good.”

    “Timothy’s car?” said Carlotta. “Yes, of course. Especially that.”

    “I’ll stay,” said Hogg. He wasn’t asking a question. The stocked impeller was still slung over his right shoulder.

    “Yes,” said Carlotta. “You may sleep in your master’s chamber, if you wish.”

    “That won’t be necessary,” said Miranda. “This is still our honeymoon, or it will be when Daniel recovers a little more.

    “Come along, Tovera,” Adele said. “I don’t think we’re needed here.”

    Daniel thought he saw the ghost of a smile on Adele’s lips.

 

---

 

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Cuvier Harbor, Jardin

    The signals officer of a corvette didn’t rate a private cabin, but Daniel had turned the captain’s Cruising Cabin over to Adele. It was only a bunk and a terminal just off the bridge so that the captain had a place to sleep for a few minutes when a situation was moving too fast for him to go to his Great Cabin on D Level directly below. On a corvette the Great Cabin was pretty cramped also, of course.

    Adele appreciated the kindness. She could work anywhere, but that very focus made her a difficult cabin-mate for anyone else.

    Tovera tapped on the hatch. It had to be Tovera because she was in the corridor outside.

    “Yes,” Adele called without looking away from her display.

    She was determining the best way to access the fire and emergency services of Newtown, the capital of Peltry. They seemed to be wholly private and decentralized, which would make it difficult to take them all out of action if required. Adele didn’t know why she might want to do that, but she never felt that time spent on preparations was wasted.

    Tovera opened the hatch. Miranda entered.

    “Oh,” said Adele. She blanked her screen by reflex, but there was nothing on it that Miranda shouldn’t see. For that matter, there was nothing on it that anyone was likely to be able to identify, let alone understand, at a glance.

    “When Lieutenant Vesey told me that you were here, I thought I’d come find you,” Miranda said diffidently. “I wasn’t serving any purpose on the quay.”

    “That was what I thought also,” Adele said. Miranda was easy to be around, which was an unusual thought for Adele. That didn’t really matter: Adele had since childhood cultivated the ability to tune people out. It was a pleasant change, however.

    Adele glanced at the real-time panorama which ran at the top of her display. Daniel had assembled his crew on the quay and had informed them from the boarding ramp that the Sissie would not be returning directly to Cinnabar. Instead he would be taking his ship on a dangerous undertaking which had only a small chance of profit. Those spacers who wanted out would have their passage paid back to Cinnabar with full wages and a bonus.

    Daniel then shook the hand of each and every spacer who signed on. The line of those waiting to reenlist hadn’t yet finished moving past the formalities to Daniel.

    “Did anybody decide to go home?” Adele asked. Her first impulse had been to check the feed from the terminal on which Vesey was enrolling spacers and compare the number to the original crew list, but that would be discourteous.

    I mustn’t disappoint my mother’s spirit, Adele thought wryly. She didn’t believe in an afterlife: all that remained of Esme Rolfe Mundy was in Adele’s memory. But Adele had a very good memory.

    “Several hung back at first,” Miranda said, “but they seemed to be joining as the line moved.”

    She leaned over Adele’s shoulder to peer at the flat-plate screen. “That’s Brausher on the end, isn’t it?” Miranda said, pointing. “She said she was going back because her daughter’s pregnant. But she’s in the line now.”

    Miranda straightened and moved back slightly. “It’s going to be like this always in our marriage, isn’t it?” she said. “Daniel shipping out and me staying behind.”

    “I suppose so,” Adele said. She almost added, “I hope so,” but she didn’t need to say that. It probably wouldn’t have surprised Miranda, though.

    “This week here on Jardin has been wonderful,” Miranda said with her face to the outer bulkhead. “Jardin really is a paradise, just as my father said.”

    Adele thought back on her week, spent mostly aboard the Princess Cecile. She had sifted Grozhinski’s data and interfiled it with the material she had brought from Cinnabar. At each stage she had considered what the new situation meant for Daniel’s existing plan, and what further information she should try to gather when they reached Peltry.

    “Yes,” Adele said. She smiled faintly. “It’s been a good week.”

    “Adele, I have a personal question,” Miranda said. “You don’t have to answer me.”

    “Yes,” said Adele. Of course she didn’t have to answer a question. Under most circumstances refusing to would be more revealing than an answer, however.

    The last figures on the harborfront had reached Vesey. Only Brausher remained to sign the crew list.

    “Adele, do you ever worry that I’m going to take Daniel away from you?” Miranda said. “From you, from the Princess Cecile; from the RCN?”

    “No,” said Adele. Her frown was almost as slight as her smile of moments before. “I don’t think about the future, to be honest, just the task in front of me. But even if I did think about the future, I wouldn’t — Miranda, I don’t worry about Cinnabar falling into the sun either.”

    Miranda laughed. “Yes, that is silly, isn’t it?” she said. “Daniel will never leave the RCN, so of course you wouldn’t worry about that. But I won’t try, Adele. I wouldn’t want to do that even if I could.”

    Daniel was addressing the newly enrolled crew again from the boarding ramp. Adele could listen if she chose to, but she knew the sort of inspiring talk Daniel gave his crews at times like these.

    “I would miss Daniel,” Adele said. “If he died, if he left for any reason. But I think I would miss the community even more.”

    Her lips smiled. Miranda flinched; she must have seen the sadness beneath Adele’s expression.

    “Daniel isn’t the family of the Princess Cecile,” Adele said. “But the community wouldn’t exist without him to hold it together. And I would miss that very much. I’d never had a real family until I met Daniel on Kostroma.”

    The crew began boarding in a jaunty column, talking and apparently singing as they trotted up the ramp.

    “But you grew up at your home until, until the conspiracy, didn’t you?” Miranda said.

    Until my parents and sister were executed on the orders of Speaker Leary, Adele added in her mind. Aloud she said, “My father cared very much about political power; my mother cared about the family name and prestige. I didn’t care about either of those things, and they didn’t care about me.”

    “I’m so sorry,” Miranda whispered.

    The words shocked Adele. She said, “Don’t be. I have everything a person could want. Well, a person like me.”

    To change the subject and because she had just remembered it, Adele opened the cabinet beneath her seat and brought out the metal-plated glove. “Can you tell me what this is, please?” she said. “I found it in the trousers Daniel was wearing in the cave, stuffed into his pocket on top of the goggles.”

    Miranda took the object. The iron plating on the upper side was a quarter of an inch thick, so it was quite heavy.

    “I don’t…” Miranda started. Then, “Oh, yes — in the grotto. We’d found what must have been the body of one of the early explorers. Just then Timothy pulled up the ladder and I forgot all about it. Daniel must have stuck this glove in his pocket.”

    “I see,” said Adele. “Do you remember anything about the body?”

    Miranda made a moue. “Not really. There was no light except the glowworms, remember, and we didn’t have long. I think it was just the clothing left that the glowworms had deposited iron on.”

    Adele turned the object over. The bare underside was made of some tightly-woven synthetic.

    “The reason I wondered,” Adele said, “is that there are only three fingers. It doesn’t seem to have been a human glove.”

    “I don’t understand,” Miranda said.

    “It’s a big universe,” Adele said as she returned the glove to the drawer. “And a very old one.”

    Tovera tapped on the hatch and opened it enough to look in. “Six would like to see his wife before we lift,” she announced. “Which is going to be soon.”

    Adele got up. “I’ll walk with you to the bridge,” she said as she gestured Miranda to the hatch.

    Next stop, Peltry in the Tarbell Stars.